AML stands for Anti-Money Laundering, and that is the process of preventing, detecting and reporting money laundering. AML legislation has been put in place to provide procedures, laws and regulations to alert to the potential risk of money laundering and to identify fraudulent transactions. AML fraud is another term for money laundering. Money laundering is the process by which criminals try to legitimise funds they have obtained illegally. Money laundering is a three-stage process of ‘placement’, ‘layering’ and ‘integration’. In more simplified terms it can be understood as the process of ‘cleaning’ illegal money. SmartSearch works to identify and verify individuals and businesses in order to highlight false identities, mitigating the risk for impersonation and other money laundering techniques. By using SmartSearch, our clients can be confident that they will be meeting the latest AML regulations and are compliant with EU, UK and worldwide Financial Action Task Force (FATF) laws and directives.

A Politically Exposed Person, or PEP, is an individual who holds a prominent public role and, by virtue of their position and influence, poses a higher risk of potential bribery and corruption for money laundering purposes. PEP fraud occurs when those in politically exposed positions are targeted to conceal the origins of illegal funds. SmartSearch provides PEP and Sanctions screening on every AML check you perform, with the option to continuously monitor your clients against changes to SmartSearch’s data sources. SmartSearch hosts the Dow Jones Factiva Watchlist which comprises over 1,100 worldwide Sanction and PEP lists. Our efficient and innovative data matching processes work to greatly minimize the number of false positives returned, saving you both time and money.

The easiest way to be alerted to fraud is to use an electronic platform, like SmartSearch. Our platform will check for suspicious activity by continually monitoring various data sources including reference agencies and fraud lists as well as bank card and mobile phone activity and alert you to anything potentially fraudulent.

You must complete customer due diligence on all customers in order to check they are who they say they are and mitigate the risk of fraud. If a customer gives false information, or is attempting to use someone else’s identity, the CDD process will identify this. Ongoing monitoring will then alert you if their status changes, for example, they are sanctioned or declared bankrupt, allowing you to reassess the fraud risk they pose.